Memory Flashcards
MSM - how is information processed
Stimulus - sensory register - stimulus - STM - maintenance rehearsal - LTM
LTM - retrieval - STM
MSM - Sensory Register stores
Iconic memory - visual information is coded visually
Echoic memory - sound/auditory information is coded acoustically
STM - capacity
Limited capacity store - 7+/- items - Miller
STM - duration
Lasts 30 seconds unless it is rehearsed
STM - coding
Information is coded acoustically
Maintenance rehearsal
Occurs when we repeat material to ourselves over and over again and if done for long enough, it passed into the LTM
LTM - capacity + duration
Capacity is unlimited and can last many years -
Bahrick et al found participants being able to remember names and faces of classmates 50 years after graduating
LTM - coding
coded semantically (in terms of meaning)
Craik and Watkins
Found that the type of rehearsal matters more. Two types - maintenance rehearsal does not transfer information into LTM, it just maintains it in STM.
Elaborative rehearsal is needed for LTM which occurs when you link information to existing knowledge
Shallice and Warrington
studied a patient known as KF whose short-term memory for digits that were read to him was very poor but his recall was better when he read the digits out loud to himself.
Limitation of MSM = means there must be one more short-term store to process visual information and another to process auditory information (WMM includes these separate stores)
Jacobs
Developed the digit-span technique, where a participant has to immediately recall a sequence of letters or numbers which increased by one letter or number with each trial. The mean amount of letters that could be correctly recalled was 7.3, and for numbers it was 9.3.
Strength - MSM
Peterson and Peterson
24 participants (psychology students) recall trigrams (meaningless three-consonant syllables) presented one at a time and had to be recalled after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds - participants counted backwards to prevent rehearsal
After 3 seconds 80% of the trigrams were recalled correctly.
After 6 seconds this fell to 50%.
After 18 seconds less than 10% of the trigrams were recalled correctly.
Strength - MSM
WMM - Central executive
Makes decisions and allocates slave systems to task
Limited capacity
WMM - Visuospatial sketchpad
stores visual/spatial information
Limited capacity about 3/4 objects
WMM - Episodic Buffer
Temporary store for information integrating the visual, spatial and verbal information processed
Limites capacity of about four chunks
Episodic buffer links working memory to LTM
Phonological loop
Deals with auditory information (acoustic coding)
Split into:
1. Phonological loop store -
Stores the words you hear
- Articulatory control system
Allows maintenance rehearsal in a ‘loop’ to keep them in working memory
Components of WMM
Central executive
Visuospatial sketchpad
Episodic Buffer
Phonological loop
Baddely et al
Study of dual-task performance - Participants had more difficulty doing two visual tasks (tracking a light and describing the letter F) then doing both a visual and verbal task.
The increased difficulty is because both visual tasks compete for the same ‘slave system’ whilst a verbal and visual task uses different stores so no competition
Strength - WMM
Central executive criticism
Lack of clarity over the central executive: this component is unsatisfactory and doesn’t explain anything and needs to ve more clearly specified than just being simply ‘attention’ - Baddeley “the central executive is the most important but least understood component of working memory”
Lieberman
WMM implies that all spatial information is linked to visual information
Points out blind people have excellent spatial awareness so the VSS should be separated into two components - one for visual and other for spatial
Fisher and Geiselman
Eyewitness testimony could be improved if the police used better techniques based on psychological insights on how the memory works and collectively be called cognitive interview
CI - Report everything
Include every single detail of the even even though it may seem irrelevant
minor details could be important or trigger other memories
CI - Reinstatement of context
Witness should remain to the original crime scene ‘in their mind; and imagine the environment (e.g. what the weather was like/what they could hear)
related to context-dependent forgetting because imaging yourself at the crime scene can help trigger memories that may have been forgotten about
CI - Reverse order
Events should be recalled in a different chronological order to the original sequence e.g. from the final point back to the beginning
prevent people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened + harder to lie
CI - Change perspective
recall the incident from other people’s perspectives e.g. how it would have to other witnesses or the perpetrator
done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall. The schema that you have for a particular setting (e.g. going into a shop) generate expectations of what have happened and it it the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened
Fisher et al
witnesses reported greater detail in their accounts of crimes when American detectives had been trained to use the technique.
Technique is more structured than the standard technique, and it seems appropriate for crime-related interviews to be very thorough in order to gather the detail required for a useful testimony.
strength - CI
Köhnken et al
Found an 81% increase of correct information but also 61% increase of incorrect information (false positives) recalled when the CI was used compared to the standard interview.
This is perhaps because more detailed recall increases the chances of making mistakes.
Limitation - CI
Limitations of CI
More time than the standard police interview:
1) time needed to build rapport with the witness and allow them to relax.
2) Requires special training + unlikely the ‘proper’ version of the CI is actually used
Milne and Bull
Found a combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced better recall than any of other conditions which confirmed some parts of the CI are more useful than others.
Suggests that at least two elements should be used to improve police interviewing even if the full CI isn’t used. which increased the credibility of the CI amongst police officers
Strength/Limitation of CI
